It happened one evening when we were travelling together in Valparaìso. We wandered into a deserted cabaret bar called the Cinzano Club. The decoration was dated and kitsch, and the elderly members of a tropical music orchestra were fast asleep on the stage, slumped on chairs facing out to small, empty, candle-lit tables. All of a sudden, the leader of the ensemble, an old guy with dyed hair and a body bowed by arthritis, noticed us at the door. He snapped himself upright and shouted, “Mambo,” vigorously shaking his pineapple-shaped maracas to wake up his musicians and breathe some sort of desperate energy into them.

“Mambo.”

Acknowledgements

With thanks to my faithful proofreaders, Jean and Antony.

Thank you, also, to the translators and interpreters of the Palais de Justice in Paris who assisted me and whose names I will deliberately not disclose so they may continue to work.

About the Author

Hannelore Cayre is an award-winning French novelist, screenwriter and director, and a practicing criminal lawyer. Her works include Legal Aid, Toiles de maître and Comme au cinéma.

After working as a lawyer in Sydney and London, translator Stephanie Smee made her literary debut with an English translation of the Countess of Ségur’s Fleurville Trilogy.

Copyright

Copyright © Hannelore Cayre, 2017

Copyright in the English translation © Stephanie Smee, 2019

First published in French by Editions Métailié, Paris, 2017

First published in English by Black Inc. Books, an imprint of Schwartz Publishing, 2019

Published by ECW Press

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Toronto, Ontario, Canada m4m 1y2

416-694-3348 / [email protected]

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any process — electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise — without the prior written permission of the copyright owners and ECW Press. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

Cover design: Michel Vrana

Front cover image: Alex Linch/Shutterstock

Back cover image: thepalmer/iStock

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: The godmother : a crime novel / Hannelore Cayre ; translated by Stephanie Smee.

Other titles: Daronne. English

Names: Cayre, Hannelore, 1963– author.

Smee, Stephanie, translator.

Description: Translation of: La Daronne.

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20190120193 Canadiana (ebook) 2019012024x

ISBN 978-1-77041-543-0 (Softcover)

ISBN 978-1-77305-443-8 (PDF)

ISBN 978-1-77305-442-1 (EPUB)

Classification: LCC PQ2703.A96 D3713 2019 DDC 843/.92—DC23